Destroyer of Worlds

by Jordan L. Hawk

  “No. Look more closely at the ground between the barrier and the wall.”

  Caleb did, but saw nothing but trampled weeds and disturbed earth. I don’t see anything.

  “They have concealed something. Many things. See how the grass is bent, the ground too flat in places?”

  Gray was a born hunter and read signs anyone else would have missed. Fuck. Land mines. Have to be.

  Forsyth counted on Gray coming back and blowing himself to smithereens. Or—terrible thought—blow off his legs but leave the corpse habitable, so he couldn’t hope to escape the soldiers coming to haul him off to some hellish cell.

  Right now, they had two advantages. Forsyth didn’t know Caleb had survived and still had Gray inside him. And he didn’t know about the Vigilant.

  Both of which he’d find out very, very soon.

  I could probably set off the mines with my TK. Caleb chewed on his lower lip in thought. Forsyth will know something is happening here the second I do it. Then again, he’s going to know it when we jump the wall anyway, given the spirit wards there. God, he wished they had a better plan, but there just wasn’t any time. He couldn’t risk John in Forsyth’s hands any longer than necessary. The idea Forsyth might torture him or try to brainwash him or maybe even force a demon inside him…

  Gray flinched at the thought. “We are here. We will save him.”

  Yeah. Or die trying. And if John viewed Caleb as just another faust, someone who’d struck a deal with an NHE out of fear or selfishness, so be it. It would hurt like hell, and it wouldn’t be fair…but like Tiffany said, fair had nothing to do with any of this.

  Headlights showed on the far side of the compound, accompanied by distant shouts. Gunfire sounded as the guards on the walls realized the headlights didn’t belong to an authorized vehicle. A few seconds later, there came a tremendous explosion, as the remote-guided truck plowed into the gate, weight and whatever ordinance the Vigilant had packed it with tearing through metal like paper. A column of flame went up, casting an orange glare over the nearby buildings.

  Caleb dropped from the tree and approached the edge of the minefield, counting under his breath. When enough minutes had passed—he hoped—to have everyone’s attention on the first explosion, he turned his gaze to the disturbed ground a few yards away.

  Show time.

  * * *

  John sat alone in a cell, his hands bound behind him in zip cuffs, his head bowed in defeat. The tiny room consisted of just a chair, a toilet, white walls, and a white floor. Silver lined the heavy door, and he wondered who—or what—they normally kept in here.

  Sean had argued with the guards, wanting to know why they didn’t put John in one of the better prisons. If they had an answer, the door shut before he heard it. Maybe only cooperative prisoners got apartments like Caleb had stayed in.

  Caleb.

  A sob hitched in John’s chest, but he fought to suppress it. They had to be watching on security cameras, and he’d be damned if he let them see him broken. But in truth, nothing remained inside but shattered bits of glass and bone. Sean had murdered Caleb, not in cold blood, but in the name of John’s safety. And Gray…

  John had spent the last several hours praying he and Sean had both misread the situation, and Gray didn’t give a damn about him. That the second Gray found himself in a new corpse, he’d forget John even existed and go about his business as a drakul, just as he always had before. Because if not…

  If not, Gray would come here. He’d be captured or destroyed. And John would be responsible for killing both of the men he loved, and not just one.

  He closed his eyes, tried to shut out the ghostly screams his imagination supplied. May Sekhmet, the Flaming One, Devourer of Evil, sever whatever ties might have bound Gray to him. And give John the strength to endure this, to deliver justice to Sean and Forsyth and everyone else who had perverted SPECTR into something terrible.

  The screams continued. Blinking slowly, John realized they weren’t inside his head after all.

  Bursts of gunfire accompanied the shrieks, drawing steadily closer. It almost sounded as if the base were under attack. But it wasn’t possible, was it? Who would be organized enough to assault a paramilitary base?

  Or…oh, hell. What if the NHEs Caleb told him about had gotten loose somehow?

  “Halt!” shouted a muffled voice just outside John’s cell. “I said stop right there! Oh, shit!”

  An assault weapon fired. Something slammed into the wall. A man cried out…then silence.

  A heavy weight punched the door. John jerked, his heart racing, as the electronic lock sparked and smoked under the assault. With a loud groan, the door began to peel back, unimaginable strength bending the steel. An NHE…and it knew he was in here.

  John took a deep breath, struggling to center. His hands were bound, but he could still use a few rudimentary exorcist’s tricks against whatever seemed determined to get to him. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, no matter how feeble.

  The door bolt gave up its battle with a shriek of tortured metal. The door swung inward with a loud clang, revealing Caleb on the other side.

  Chapter 10

  John’s heart stuttered in his chest.

  “Caleb?” he whispered, but knew he was mistaken even as the name left his lips. Without the silver facing of the door in between, the enormous flood of etheric power poured over him, as though he stood before a breaking storm, vast as the horizon. The scent of sandalwood and desert rain mingled with ozone, so familiar and beloved it wrung a small cry from him. “Gray?”

  Etheric energy folded inward, like some mad origami, fitting something huge into an impossibly small space. Long black hair fell against slender shoulders, and the oil slick of Gray’s gaze receded, leaving behind only Caleb’s brown eyes.

  “John!” he cried and ran into the cell.

  It wasn’t possible, John thought dazedly. But Caleb’s mouth pressed hot and frantic against his own, the hands gripping his hair undeniably solid. A bewildered sob wrenched its way out of John’s aching chest, and Caleb drew back.

  “Is this real?” John asked, because he had to be dreaming. Had to be.

  “Yeah, sweetheart.” Tears streamed down Caleb’s face, and he swallowed convulsively. “It’s real. I’m okay.”

  “But…how?”

  “Later.” There came the sound of distant gunfire, and Caleb glanced back over his shoulder. “We don’t have time, okay? The Vigilant—those people with the moth symbol—are helping us. So is Kaniyar. They’re distracting everybody else, while I get you out.”

  “But—I saw—Sean shot you—”

  Caleb winced. “Yeah. But I’m pretty hard to kill these days.” He looked away, long hair falling to hide his face. “There’s no time. We have to get you out of here, and Gray’s better at this fighting thing than me. I’m going to let him have the reins for now, okay?”

  “I…okay.”

  Etheric energy unfolded again, like a blooming flower, or a building thunderhead. Eyes black as the void between stars looked back at John, lit by occasional flickers of lighting deep within. Gray rose from his crouch in a single, economical movement. “I will free you,” he said, in a voice like a roll of thunder.

  “Oh,” was all John could think to say

  Gray stepped behind the chair, and a moment later strong fingers touched John’s wrists. “I will bite through the restraints. Do not be afraid.”

  “I’m not.” He swallowed thickly. “What…what time is it?”

  A pause. Then: “It is too late,” Gray said. “Caleb had to choose.”

  Shit. No. Caleb didn’t want this, never wanted anything to do with NHEs or SPECTR or any of it. “Caleb wouldn’t have chosen this.”

  “But he did,” Gray growled, and yanked John’s wrists to his mouth. For a heart-stopping instant, John thought he would feel teeth sink into his flesh. Instead, the restraints tightened sharply as Gray bit them, the scrape of teeth light against John’s skin.

 
The zip cuffs fell away, and John lurched to his feet, rubbing his sore wrists. Although he could hear distant shouting and the wail of alarms, none seemed close by, so he risked stepping out into the hall. A dead guard lay outside, his body a broken heap in the middle of the corridor. Bullet holes stitched the wall, and an automatic rifle lay a few feet away, its muzzle bent.

  Hoping the guard had a side arm, John crouched by the body. “I don’t understand,” he said to Gray, because it took his mind off the still-warm blood against his fingers as he searched. “Caleb didn’t want this. He fucking hated every minute of it.”

  The guard wore a Glock in a hip holster. John pulled it out and checked the magazine. Fully loaded. He rose to his feet, and found Gray looming over him, practically in his face.

  Gray’s long hair whipped around his head like a nest of black snakes. Lightning danced in his obsidian eyes, and the storm front of his power pushed against John’s skin. All the little hairs on John’s arms rose. “Because we would not see you dead.”

  And oh no, no, he couldn’t take responsibility for this. He turned and started walking quickly away, in what he hoped was the right direction.

  “You misunderstood,” he told Gray. Caleb hadn’t actually made a decision, hadn’t chosen this just to save John. He couldn’t have. “You just ran out of time. Caleb wouldn’t pick this—”

  “Silence!” Gray’s hand locked on John’s arm, yanking him back. John’s heart lurched, and Gray snarled at him, a flash of fang and menace. “Do not diminish his choice!”

  John’s throat constricted. It was true, damn it, this was his fault. Caleb had missed the deadline because John hadn’t realized Sean was a damned traitor. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Stay behind me,” Gray ordered, releasing him as if he couldn’t stand to even touch John. “In case we meet other mortals with guns. You are far too vulnerable to bullets.”

  Oh. John nodded. “Okay. Yes.” He couldn’t dwell on the sheer misery building up in his gut, not until they were somewhere safe.

  Gray took the lead, moving cautiously down the hall, cat silent. “The other mortals would have exorcised me if Caleb had asked,” he said after a moment. “But he could not abandon you here. He chose this, to save you and perhaps me as well. Even though he knew you would hate him for it.”

  Okay, what? “Why? How could I possibly hate Caleb? Goddess, I thought he was dead!”

  Gray paused at a cross-corridor, listening intently. Apparently satisfied, he continued on his way. “You wished Caleb to live,” he said. He didn’t look back over his shoulder, or even acknowledge John, but there was an edge of—what? Anger? Bitterness? Disappointment?—to his deep voice. “But you wished me to die.”

  John came to a sudden halt, feeling as if all the air had vanished from his lungs and left him gasping. “What? No! That’s not true.”

  “Liar!” Gray halted as well. His hair swirled agitatedly around his shoulders. The air crackled with etheric energy, the aroma of ozone flooding the hall, overwhelming even the smells of blood and burning. “You wished me stripped from Caleb and forced into a bottle and killed. You wanted me destroyed, like any demon.”

  Oh. Oh, hell.

  He’d thought he’d done the right thing. Told himself even if the worst happened and Kaniyar realized he’d let Gray go on purpose, Caleb would be cleared. Questioning under empath would show he didn’t know anything about John’s plan. And he’d feared Caleb would hate him for throwing their relationship away just to let Gray go.

  He’d never considered how Gray might feel about it all, believing John intended to murder him. Even if he thought it impossible to be exorcised, he would have known John wanted to get rid of him.

  John wasn’t sure he’d ever hated himself this much, not even when he was a teen and thought his paranormal abilities had damned him to hell. “I’m sorry,” he said in a cracked voice. “I intended to exorcise you, yes. But I swear, I’d planned on dropping the bottle. I wanted it to look like an accident when it broke and you escaped.”

  Gray turned on his heel and strode away, coat snapping behind him. “Over and over again, your kind have told Caleb ‘NHEs lie.’ It is your dogma, the shield you hide behind, the excuse you make. But it is you mortals who are the liars.”

  Gray’s long strides forced John into a jog just to keep up. “I’m not lying, damn it! You have to believe me.”

  “No, I do not. Your duty was to kill me. Why would you risk everything to release me?”

  John grabbed Gray’s arm, but he would have had as much success at stopping a car with his bare hands. “Just slow down and listen to me for half a second!”

  “There is nothing you can say—”

  “I love you!”

  Gray stopped, so suddenly John almost collided with him.

  John tightened his grip on coat sleeve, desperate to make Gray understand. “I love you,” he repeated, and his voice cracked on the words.

  Silence. Gray didn’t move, save for the slither of his hair, the strands moving in an unfelt wind.

  Goddess. John had fucked this up. He forced himself to release the leather between his fingers and step back, even though the gesture felt like he was letting go of more than that. Of hope, maybe, some stupid hope he’d had in the back of his mind that Gray might love him too, and Caleb wouldn’t hate both of them for it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have…we need to get out of here. We’ll—we’ll talk later, if—”

  Claw-tipped hands grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, and shoved him against the wall. John had just enough time to wonder if he’d made a horrible mistake, if he’d enraged Gray and was about to pay with his life.

  Gray kissed him.

  * * *

  John’s first, half-coherent thought was Gray didn’t kiss anything like Caleb. He plundered John’s mouth aggressively with his tongue, all the while pinning John to the wall so he couldn’t move. Drawing away slightly, Gray scraped those fangs across John’s lower lip, dragging a whimper out of him, before diving back in. Etheric energy sang along John’s sensitive nerves, like a whisper of electricity over his skin.

  John kissed back, heart pounding, his cock painfully stiff in his jeans. He felt like he’d been waiting for this his whole life, ever since his fifteen-year-old self realized he could sense and manipulate etheric energy.

  Goddess, he wanted to come right there in his pants. Which, given their situation, was utterly insane.

  Gray released him abruptly, and was on the other side of the corridor before John could even register the movement. There came a scream, and one of the RD guards smashed into the concrete wall hard enough to break open his helmet.

  “Perhaps we should…continue this later?” Gray said. He sounded as dazed as John felt. Which was a hell of an ego rush.

  “Um, yeah,” John said, stepping over the guard’s body and making sure he still had his Glock. “Later would probably be better.”

  * * *

  John loves him.

  It is wonderful in a way Gray did not know something could be wonderful: huge and all-encompassing. And frightening, because he doesn’t understand what it means, exactly, or what is expected of him. Does John wish him to converse—about demons, perhaps, and how to hunt them, which is something he knows—or is that Caleb’s purview? Is he allowed to kiss John again, or should he wait until asked, or—

  “Could you possibly worry a bit more about the people trying to kill us?”

  Which is, yes, annoying. The Vigilant’s distraction had worked, drawing most of the guards to the assault on the far side of the compound. Some had come running back when Caleb set off the mines and Gray tore through the spirit wards, however. They had not stopped him, and he had found the building the Vigilant said held cells. It had been full of foolish mortals with guns, which of course meant a great deal of screaming and death.

  And John said he loved Gray, and Gray didn’t know how to react at first, until Caleb said to kiss John, and—

 
; “Focus!”

  More mortals have responded to the shrieking alarms. Does Forsyth not care if his minions live or die?

  It does not matter.

  Gray tears the automatic rifle from the hands of one, breaking her fingers. Another lunges at him, firing, and the bullets pound into his body. The kevlar lining of the coat deflects some, but the rest rip through his torso, hot lead and searing agony. Gray strikes out, claws raking across forehead, eye, and cheek, laying all open to bone and nerve. The narrow hall smells of blood, hot and fresh, and his stomach growls with hunger even though no demons are present.

  “How much farther to the entrance?” John asks.

  “Not far. Did they bring you in another way?” A shorter way, perhaps?

  Something flickers across John’s features, which Gray cannot quite parse. “No. I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have,” John says, his voice stiff and flat. “Didn’t exactly seem like escape would be an option.”

  Had he believed they would not come for him?

  “He thought I’d died.”

  “I would not have let Caleb die,” Grays says, and though it is meant as a statement of fact, John flinches. He has said something wrong, but what? A little tendril of fear curls through him, because there is too much he doesn’t understand, even after forty days in a living body, even with all the washed-out memories of his previous hosts.

  “Christ, just get us away from here, and we’ll work it out, okay?”

  Gray leads the way past the dead and dying guards, around the corner—then stops.

  A mortal stands in the hall, his face white with terror. The smell of human fear mingles with stale cigarette smoke. Unlike the others, he is not dressed in body armor, but a suit and coat. He holds a gun in his hand, but it hangs limply by his side.

  Rage boils through Caleb: betrayal and fury, and it resonates with Gray’s own anger. But it is John who speaks the traitor’s name.

  “Sean.”

  * * *

  For an instant, John stood transfixed, the sight of Sean like a stake through a vampire’s heart, pinning him in place. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel anything but rage and betrayal.